your face is like a melody
by circus-fantasy
Summary: "When they get into her apartment, he sets his bags down, toeing off his shoes, as she sheds her coat and boots by the door, setting her keys in the tray and hanging her purse on the hook. And it all feels so natural, as if this is the normal progression of life, as if they should have gotten to this point six months ago instead of now." A separation and reunion. AU.


**AN: This was written in an attempt to stall cleaning and studying. I hope it's not too confusing. Honestly, I'm not quite sure what this is, really. Enjoy!**

She wakes up in this trance—bridged in a world between dreamland and reality, unable to escape. It's as if she can't even tell the difference, left completely unaware of what's truth and what's fiction. Because in these dreams, everything is so vivid. And not in the sense of being colorful, and fun, and seemingly realistic. But vivid because she's lived it before, in her mind, in real life. She knows these motions, these feelings, these touches. The sounds, and the words. None of it is unfamiliar. And yet when she makes her departure from dreamland back into reality, these familiar senses are left behind in the darkness.

She's dropped into the harshness of reality.

The real world where the touches are only a brush of the wind across her shoulder. The kisses from the chapped air in the morning. The _I love you's _yelled to someone across the street.

These familiar motions that greet her in dreamland and abandon her in reality is what she misses most.

Maybe it's not the fact that he's gone, it's that she knows he's coming home soon. Yet, she doesn't know when _soon _is. _Soon _right now is just a figment of her imagination. An idea. This grand scheme built up in her mind. _Soon _is not a dimension or reality, but something only fabricated by thought.

—

She has ideas of how it could happen. Kurt calling her to the airport, telling her his plane has landed. A last minute Skype call, "Baby, we're coming home now, see you soon!" Him showing up at her front door, unannounced and sweeping her off of her feet.

But things were tense before he left. Thrown hairbrushes and magazines, slamming doors, and _I hate you's_ exchanged alike. Tense atmospheres made way for distant conversations and distant conversations turned into a slow drop of contact. It's not as if his leaving was what broken them apart. It was _them _that broke them apart.

—

At night, this loss of herself, her boy—her sweet boy—_them_ disappears. In her dreams, the familiarity comes back, no longer stressed or forced, but fluid, natural, tender, soft. Wispy and angelic. Almost unreal.

(Because it is.)

—

"He's coming home, Rachel. Finn's coming back." This time, when reality rips her from her dreams, it's bittersweet. Reality finally leading her to whats been consuming her since he left six months ago.

She's a ball of nerves, standing there in the airport. Her fingers drum her thigh and she shifts from foot to foot, humming every so often, or letting out a little sigh here and there.

Her breath leaves her body when he walks through those doors, into the meeting area of the airport. She ignores Kurt rushing to his side, grabbing a bag from his hand, and instead focuses her eyes on _Finn. _She draws her eyes up his body, noticing the broadness of his shoulders, the sharpness of his cheekbones, the way his clothes cling to him differently than they used to. He's not wearing his uniform, for one, but instead is dressed in dark jeans and a button down with the sleeves rolled up. His got the tiniest bit of scruffiness to his chin and cheeks, and his hair is just slightly longer, too.

She begins to question herself, and turns to the mirror beside her, checking over her appearance. She hardly wonders if he remembers her, she was so much different the last time they talked—when she was stuck trying to become someone else. But now her hair's longer, her bangs gone. She's wearing jeans instead of her old skirts. A loose knit sweater hanging off of her shoulder.

And as she glances down at her feet, clad in brown leather boots, she feels from behind two large hands cover her hips, a chin come to rest on her shoulder, a voice in her ear—_that voice_—the voice she's die to hear, the voice she'd know from two thousand miles away.

"Hi, baby girl."

—

The ride back from the airport is silent and Kurt drops them off at her own apartment and rides off in the taxi off to his own. Finn carries his own bags upstairs, and Rachel leads the way. There's a foot or two between them as they walk, as if the reunion at the airport hadn't happened. As if he's too scared to get close to her, and she too frightened to push things too fast.

When they get into her apartment, he sets his bags down, toeing off his shoes, as she sheds her coat and boots by the door, setting her keys in the tray and hanging her purse on the hook. And it all feels so natural, as if this is the normal progression of life, as if they should have gotten to this point six months ago instead of now.

"Finn, I—I don't know what's happened to us. And I don't know where we're going—"

But he kisses her, taking two long strides to reach her body and that seems to solves all of her questions. Here's the thing about Kurt: knowing they haven't talked for six months, left things tense before they parted, having no contact for so long, he puts them in a room together, forcing their reunion. And it's inevitable, because these dreams are reality. Theses touches that she remembers happened. They weren't a lie. She felt them because she _knew _them.

And she pushes aside the idea of talking as he kisses her and backs her up against the wall. He pins her there with his chest, and oh, she can feel every new muscle beneath his shirt. She runs her hands up his arms when he places his hands against the wall on either side of her head.

"Rachel—" falls from his lips, quietly, softly, and she has no response to that because she has absolutely no idea where they stand.

She wonders if he's forgiven her when he pushes her down into the mattress later, if he's no longer upset at her as he peels her shirt from her head, if the words she's said to him have been erased from his mind as he unclasps her bra.

And she figures she must have forgiven his decision to go to the army when she lets him run his hands down his legs, that she no longer feels that sense of abandonment when he slips off her panties, that she feels she can trust him again when she finally lets her hands move and pulls off his boxers.

And after when he's curled around her holding her so close as if he hasn't been to hell and back and she hasn't spent most nights in this same position crying herself to sleep, she thinks that maybe they need time to find their way out of this dreamland because they never really left.


End file.
